3. Fortune's Favorites

by Colleen McCullough

  November was a cruel month, even though its weather was as fair and pleasant as any May when season and calendar coincided. Aunt Julia suddenly began to sicken with some obscure complaint none of the physicians including Lucius Tuccius could diagnose. It was a syndrome of loss weight, spirit, energy, interest. "I think she's tired, Caesar," said Aurelia. "But not tired of living, surely!" cried Caesar, who couldn't bear the thought of a world without Aunt Julia. "Oh yes," answered Aurelia. "That most of all." "She has so much to live for!" "No. Her husband and her son are dead, so she has nothing to live for. I've told you that before." And, wonder of wonders, the beautiful purple eyes filled with tears. "I half understand. My husband is dead. If you were to die, Caesar, that would be my end. I would have nothing to live for." "It would be a grief, certainly, but not an end, Mater," he said, unable to believe he meant that much to her. "You have grandchildren, you have two daughters." "That is true. Julia does not, however." The tears were dashed away. "But a woman's life is in her men, Caesar, not in the women she has borne or the children they bear. No woman truly esteems her lot, it is thankless and obscure. Men move and control the world, not women. So the intelligent woman lives her life through her men." He sensed a weakening in her, and struck. "Mater, just what did Sulla mean to you?" And, weakened, she answered. "He meant excitement and interest. He esteemed me in a way your father never did, though I never longed to be Sulla's wife. Or his mistress, for that matter. Your father was my true mate. Sulla was my dream. Not because of the greatness in him, but because of the agony. Of friends he had none who were his peers. Just the Greek actor who followed him into retirement, and me, a woman." The weakness left her, she looked brisk. "But enough of that! You may take me to see Julia." Julia looked and sounded a shadow of her old self, but sparked a little when she saw Caesar, who understood a little better what his mother had told him: the intelligent woman lived through men. Should that be? he wondered. Ought not women have more? But then he envisioned the Forum Romanum and the Curia Hostilia filled half with women, and shuddered. They were for pleasure, private company, service, and usefulness. Too bad if they wanted more! "Tell me a Forum story," said Julia, holding Caesar's hand. Her own hand, he noted, grew more and more to resemble a talon, and his nostrils, so attuned to that exquisite perfume she had always exuded, these days sensed a sourness in it, an underlying odor it could not quite disguise. Not exactly age. The word death occurred to him; he pushed it away and glued a smile to his face. Actually I do have a Forum story to tell you or rather, a basilica story," he said lightly. "A basilica? Which one?" "The first basilica, the Basilica Porcia which Cato the Censor built a hundred years ago. As you know, one end of its ground floor has always been the headquarters of the College of Tribunes of the Plebs. And perhaps because the tribunes of the plebs are once more enjoying their full powers, this year's lot decided to improve their lot. Right in the middle of their space is a huge column which makes it just about impossible for them to conduct a meeting of more than their ten selves. So Plautius, the head of the college, decided to get rid of the pillar. He called in our most distinguished firm of architects, and asked it if there was any possibility the column could be dispensed with. And after much measuring and calculating, he got his answer: yes, the column could be dispensed with and the building would remain standing comfortably." Julia lay on her couch with her body fitted around Caesar, sitting on its edge; her big grey eyes, sunk these days into bruised looking orbits, were fixed on his face. She was smiling, genuinely interested. "I cannot imagine where this story is going," she said, squeezing his hand. "Nor could the tribunes of the plebs! The builders brought in their scaffolds and shored the place up securely, the architects probed and tapped, everything was ready to demolish the pillar. When in walked a young man of twenty three they tell me he will be twenty four in December and announced that he forbade the removal of the pillar! " 'And who might you be?' asked Plautius. 'I am Marcus Porcius Cato, the great grandson of Cato the Censor, who built this basilica,' said the young man. " 'Good for you!' said Plautius. 'Now shift yourself out of the way before the pillar comes down on top of you!' "But he wouldn't shift, and nothing they could do or say would make him shift. He set up camp right there beneath the offending obstacle, and harangued them unmercifully while ever there was someone present to harangue. On and on and on, in a voice which, says Plautius and I agree with him, having heard it for myself could shear a bronze statue in half." Aurelia now looked as interested as Julia, and snorted. "What rubbish!" she said. "I hope they vetoed him!" They tried. He refused to accept the veto. He was a full member of the Plebs and his great grandfather built the place, they would disturb it over his dead body. I give him this he hung on like a dog to a rat! His reasons were endless, but mostly all revolved around the fact that his great grandfather had built the Basilica Porcia in a certain way, and that certain way was sacred, hallowed, a part of the mos maiorum.'' Julia chuckled. "Who won?" she asked. "Young Cato did, of course. The tribunes of the plebs just couldn't stand that voice anymore." "Didn't they try force? Couldn't they throw him off the Tarpeian Rock?" asked Aurelia, looking scandalized. "I think they would have loved to, but the trouble was that by the time they might have been driven to use force, word had got around, and so many people had gathered every day to watch the struggle that Plautius felt it would do the tribunes of the plebs more harm in the eyes of the populace to use real force than any good removal of the column might have brought them. Oh, they threw him out of the building a dozen times, but he just came back! And it became clear that he would never give up. So Plautius held a meeting and all ten members of the college agreed to suffer the continued presence of the pillar," said Caesar. What does this Cato look like?'' asked Julia. Caesar wrinkled his brow. "Difficult to describe. He's as ugly as he is pretty. Perhaps the closest description is to say that he reminds me of a highly bred horse trying to eat an apple through a latticework trellis." "All teeth and nose," said Julia instantly. "Exactly." "I can tell you another story about him," said Aurelia. "Go ahead!" said Caesar, noting Julia's interest. "It happened before young Cato turned twenty. He had always been madly in love with his cousin Aemilia Lepida Vlamercus's daughter. She was already engaged to Metellus Scipio when Metellus Scipio went out to Spain to serve with his father, but when he came back some years before his father, he and Aemilia Lepida fell out badly. She broke off the engagement and announced that she was going to marry Cato instead. Mamercus was furious! Especially, it seems, because my friend Servilia she's Cato's half sister had warned him about Cato and Aemilia Lepida. Anyway, it all turned out fine in the end, because Aemilia Lepida had no intention of marrying Cato. She just used him to make Metellus Scipio jealous. And when Metellus Scipio came to her and begged to be forgiven, Cato was out, Metellus Scipio was in again. Shortly afterward they were married. Cato, however, took his rejection so badly that he tried to kill both Metellus Scipio and Aemilia Lepida, and when that was frustrated, he tried to sue Metellus Scipio for alienating Aemilia Lepida's affections! His half brother Servilius Caepio a nice young man, just married to Hortensius's daughter persuaded Cato that he was making a fool of himself, and Cato desisted. Except, apparently, that for the next year he wrote endless poetry I am assured was all very bad." "It's funny," said Caesar, shoulders shaking. "It wasn't at the time, believe me! Whatever young Cato may turn out to be like later on, his career to date indicates that he will always have the ability to irritate people intensely," said Aurelia. "Mamercus and Cornelia Sulla not to mention Servilia! detest him. So these days, I believe, does Aemilia." "He's married to someone else now, isn't he?" asked Caesar. "Yes, to an Attilia. Not a terribly good match, but then, he doesn't have a great deal of money. His wife bore a little girl last year." And that, decided Caesar, studying his aunt, was as much diverting company as she could tolerate for the moment. "I don't want to believe it, but you're right, Mater. Aunt Julia is going to die," he said to Aurelia as soon as they left Julia's house. "Eventually, but not yet, my son. She'll last well in
to the new year, perhaps longer." "Oh, I hope she lasts until after I leave for Spain!" "Caesar! That's a coward's hope," said his remorseless mother. "You don't usually shirk unpleasant events." He stopped in the middle of the Alta Semita, both hands out and clenched into fists. "Oh, leave me alone!" he cried, so loudly that two passersby glanced at the handsome pair curiously. "It's always duty, duty, duty! Well, Mater, to be in Rome to bury Aunt Julia is one duty I don't want!" And only custom and courtesy kept him at his mother's side for the rest of that uncomfortable walk home; he would have given almost anything to have left her to find her own way back to the Subura. Home wasn't the happiest of places either. Now into her sixth month of pregnancy, Cinnilla wasn't very well. The "all day and all night sickness" as Caesar phrased it, trying to make a joke, had disappeared, only to be succeeded by a degree of swelling in the feet and legs which both distressed and alarmed the prospective mother. Who was obliged to spend most of her time in bed, feet and legs elevated. Not only was Cinnilla uncomfortable and afraid; she was cross too. An attitude of mind the whole household found difficult to cope with, as it did not belong in Cinnilla's nature. Thus it was that for the first time during his periods of residence in Rome, Caesar elected to spend his nights as well as his days elsewhere than the apartment in the Subura. To stay with Crassus was not possible; Crassus could only think of the cost of feeding an extra mouth, especially toward the end of the most expensive year of his life. And Gaius Matius had recently married, so the other ground floor apartment of Aurelia's insula (which would have been the most convenient place to stay) was also not available. Nor was he in the mood for dalliance; the affair with Caecilia Metella Little Goat had been abruptly terminated when Verres decamped to Massilia, and no one had yet appealed to him as a replacement. Truth to tell, the frail state of physical well being in both his aunt and his wife did not encourage dalliance. So he ended in renting a small four roomed apartment down the Vicus Patricius from his home, and spent most of his time there with Lucius Decumius for company. As the neighborhood was quite as unfashionable as his mother's insula, his political acquaintances would not have cared to visit him there, and the secretive side of him liked that anyway. The forethought in him also saw its possibilities when the mood for dalliance returned; he began to take an interest in the place (it was in a good building) and acquire a few nice pieces of furniture and art. Not to mention a good bed.

  At the beginning of December he effected a most touching reconciliation. The two consuls were standing together on the rostra waiting for the urban praetor Lucius Cotta to convene the Assembly of the People; it was the day upon which Cotta's law reforming the jury system was to be ratified. Though Crassus held the fasces for December and was obliged to attend, Pompey was not about to permit a public occasion of such moment to pass without his presence. And as the consuls could not very well stand one to either end of the rostra without provoking much comment from the crowd, they stood together. In silence, admittedly, but at least in apparent amity. Along to attend the meeting came Caesar's first cousin, young Gaius Cotta, the son of the late consul Gaius Cotta. Though he was not yet a member of the Senate, nothing could have prevented his casting his vote in the tribes; the law belonged to his Uncle Lucius. But when he saw Pompey and Crassus looking more like a team than they had done in months, he cried out so loudly that the noise and movement around him stilled. Everyone looked his way. "Oh!" he cried again, more loudly still. "My dream! My dream has come true!" And he bounded onto the rostra so suddenly that Pompey and Crassus automatically stepped apart. Young Gaius Cotta planted himself between them, one arm around each, and gazed at the throng in the well of the Comitia with tears streaming down his face. "Quirites!" he shouted, "last night I had a dream! Jupiter Optimus Maximus spoke to me out of cloud and fire, soaked me and burned me! Far below where I stood I could see the two figures of our consuls, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus. But they were not as I saw them today, standing together. Instead they stood one to the east and one to the west, stubbornly looking in opposite directions. And the voice of the Great God said to me out of the cloud and the fire, 'They must not leave their consular office disliking each other! They must leave as friends!' " An utter silence had fallen; a thousand faces looked up at the three men. Gaius Cotta let his arms fall from about the consuls and stepped forward, then turned to face them. "Gnaeus Pompeius, Marcus Licinius, will you not be friends?" the young man asked in a ringing voice. For a long moment no one moved. Pompey's expression was stern, so was Crassus's. "Come, shake hands! Be friends!" shouted Gaius Cotta. Neither consul moved. Then Crassus rotated toward Pompey and held out one massive hand. "I am delighted to yield first place to a man who was called Magnus before he so much as had a beard, and celebrated not one but two triumphs before he was a senator!" Crassus yelled. Pompey emitted a sound somewhere between a squeal and a yelp, grabbed at Crassus's paw and wrung both it and his forearm, face transfigured. They stepped toward each other and fell on each other's necks. And the crowd went wild. Soon the news of the reconciliation was speeding into the Velabrum, into the Subura, into the manufactories beyond the swamp of the Palus Ceroliae; people came running from everywhere to see if it was true that the consuls were friends again. For the rest of that day the two of them walked around Rome together, shaking hands, allowing themselves to be touched, accepting congratulations.